The tendency to seek out, notice and remember information that supports what you already believe while discounting evidence against it — for example following only the news sources that agree with your politics.

Relying too heavily on the first piece of information encountered when making a judgment, so later estimates stay near it — for example a shopper judging a price to be a bargain because of the crossed-out original price beside it.

Ignoring how common a category actually is in favor of specific descriptive information — for example judging someone likely to be a pilot from a personality sketch, when pilots are a tiny fraction of the population.

Judging a combination of two conditions to be more likely than one of them alone, which is impossible — for example rating 'bank teller and active in the feminist movement' as more probable than 'bank teller'.

The tendency, once an outcome is known, to believe you would have predicted it all along — for example calling an election result obvious after the votes are counted.

Holding more confidence in your judgments or knowledge than their accuracy warrants — for example students who feel certain of an answer being wrong far more often than that certainty implies.

Attributing your own behavior to the situation while attributing other people's identical behavior to their character — for example 'I was late because of traffic, but he was late because he is careless'.

Taking credit for successes as personal while blaming failures on outside circumstances — for example crediting a good grade to your intelligence and a bad one to an unfair test.

Dunning-Kruger effect

The finding that people with low ability in a domain tend to overestimate their competence, partly because the knowledge needed to recognize their mistakes is the very knowledge they lack.

Continuing to invest in something because of resources already spent rather than because of expected future value — for example sitting through a film you dislike because the ticket is already paid for.

Losses feel psychologically larger than equivalent gains, so people work harder to avoid losing something than to gain the same amount — for example refusing a coin flip that pays 100 on heads and costs 100 on tails.

Reaching different decisions depending on how logically equivalent information is presented — for example preferring a treatment described as having a 90 percent survival rate over one described as having a 10 percent mortality rate.

Preferring things to stay as they are, so the current option becomes a reference point and change needs extra justification — for example staying on a default insurance plan year after year without comparing it.

Valuing something more highly simply because you own it — for example demanding far more to sell a mug than you would have been willing to pay for the same mug minutes earlier.

Believing you are less likely than other people to experience negative events and more likely to experience positive ones — for example a new business owner rating their own chance of failure far below the industry norm.

Perceiving a relationship between two variables when none exists, or a far stronger one than the data support — for example believing a full moon causes strange behavior because those are the nights people notice.

Believing that past outcomes of independent events change the odds of the next one — for example expecting heads to be 'due' after a run of tails, when each flip remains an independent 50-50 event.

Believing that someone on a run of successes is more likely to succeed again on an independent event — for example staying at a slot machine because it has just paid out several times.

Letting one positive impression of a person spill over into unrelated judgments about them — for example assuming an attractive or likeable job candidate is also more competent and more honest.

Favoring members of your own group over outsiders when evaluating or rewarding — for example rating identical work more highly when you believe it came from someone at your own school.

Holding on to a belief even after the evidence that created it has been discredited — for example continuing to doubt someone's competence after learning that the negative report was actually about a different person.

24 free flashcards

Cognitive Biases flashcards

This deck defines the named biases and heuristics that appear across introductory psychology, AP Psychology and behavioral economics courses: confirmation bias, anchoring, the availability and representativeness heuristics, the base-rate and conjunction fallacies, hindsight bias, the fundamental attribution error, self-serving bias, loss aversion, framing, the sunk cost fallacy and the gambler's fallacy, among others. Every card gives a one-sentence definition followed by a short clarifying example.

These terms are almost always tested through scenarios rather than by definition: you are given a short vignette and asked which bias it illustrates. That makes the example clause matter as much as the definition, and it means the close pairs are where marks are lost — availability against representativeness, hindsight against overconfidence, the fundamental attribution error against self-serving bias. Learning each term attached to a concrete situation is what makes the vignettes readable at a glance.

The deck

How to study this deck

Study the easily confused pairs side by side rather than alphabetically: availability versus representativeness, hindsight versus overconfidence, fundamental attribution error versus self-serving bias, and gambler's fallacy versus hot-hand fallacy. Those pairs are exactly where exam vignettes are set.
Write your own one-line example for each bias from your own life before looking at the back of the card. A self-generated example is far more retrievable than a textbook one, and vignette questions are answered by matching a scenario to a remembered scenario.
Practise in reverse: read only the example clause and name the bias. That is the direction multiple-choice questions actually test, and it exposes the definitions you can recite but cannot apply.

Cognitive Biases: FAQ

What is the difference between a heuristic and a cognitive bias?

A heuristic is a mental shortcut that makes judgment fast and usually good enough, such as judging frequency by how easily examples come to mind. A cognitive bias is the systematic error that results when such a shortcut is applied where it does not fit, so heuristics are the mechanism and biases are the predictable mistake.

What is the difference between the availability and representativeness heuristics?

The availability heuristic judges how likely something is by how easily examples come to mind, which is why vivid events feel more common than they are. The representativeness heuristic judges likelihood by how closely something resembles a stereotype, which is why people ignore base rates when a description sounds like a category.

How do I study cognitive biases for a psychology exam?

Learn each term with a concrete example attached, then practise identifying biases from short scenarios, because that is how they are tested. Cram can turn your psychology notes into flashcards with AI and use spaced repetition so the similar-sounding terms stay distinct.

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Cognitive Biases flashcards

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Cognitive Biases: FAQ

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